


Always, Evermore

by The_Shy_One



Series: Fratt Week 2020 [3]
Category: Constantine: The Hellblazer (Comics), Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Choking, Crossover, For Constantine: The Hellblazer, Frank Castle Angst, Haunting, Inspired by Music, M/M, Magic, Prompt Fic, Spirits, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27276874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Shy_One/pseuds/The_Shy_One
Summary: Frank wakes to see the spirit of his daughter standing by his bed. Her haunting escalates to the point of hiring an exorcist from the internet.(Fratt Week 2020 Prompt - Soul.)
Relationships: Frank Castle & Lisa Castle, Frank Castle/Matt Murdock
Series: Fratt Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985983
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20
Collections: Fratt Week





	Always, Evermore

It was the middle of the night when it occurred. A cliche, even one that had Lisa wrinkling her nose when he was required to give her a ghost story on one of the few camping trips they had together. She always claimed that he could do better, that he obviously had something better because he hung out with Billy. _(Anger flared at the thought of the man._ _Billy, that son of a bitch, a bastard brother, in the end, to do what he did, betrayed him and his family. For making him see his wife die, bleeding and choking on her blood, curled around her son to protect him, for seeing his little boy cry out of confusion and for seeing his daughter’s head spill onto his hands, for hearing her cry only once before she died. For seeing all of that and deciding that he couldn’t feel an ounce of shame for doing that, for making the call to do_ ** _that!)_**

He would smile and start something else to her request, scaring her enough that at some point in the night, she would move her sleeping bag closer to him, snuggling close despite her protests in daylight that she was a big girl and had handled it. Frank would always smile at that, ruffling her hair as he asked her to help him take down the tents and pack up.

But it happened in the middle of the night, as most stories about hauntings always go. Frank wakes up to a cold room - despite the blistering heatwave that the city was currently dealing with - and sees Lisa standing at the side of his bed, staring down at him. Frank couldn’t tell the emotion on her face as she flickered for a moment, but she stayed for a few seconds, watching him with piercing eyes. Then without warning, she leaves, taking all the cold air with her and the memory that she existed.

His breath caught his throat and he wanted to cry at the whole situation, a rare comfort that he actually saw his little girl. His little girl, his little girl, she had been there, watching him. She hadn’t done anything else, but she had been there.

He didn’t think about it, didn’t want to think about it. He had other things to focus on and he couldn’t be distracted by what her visit might mean for him. There was hope somewhere inside him that it was something nice, a show that she had forgiven him for unwittingly dragging her and her mother and brother into the shitshow he’d gotten himself into. 

But there was something else inside him that said he should know better. That he should heed the sign of her suddenly showing up and do something about it.

Frank doesn’t do anything about the ghost, focuses on both his day job and his mission as the Punisher, forgetting about the incident except in fleeting moments. That is until the next sighting that he gets. 

Instead of waking up to her standing over him, freezing the room, Lisa stands over him and moves to gripe her hands around his neck once he looks at her, squeezing his throat to the point he struggles to breathe. On her face was pure fiery, eyes staring down at him as she continued to choke him.

His little girl is mad at him and he can’t do anything to ease it. He stares at her, watches her form glow as Lisa grows angrier, squeezing his throat harder and harder. He uselessly tries to pry her hands off his neck, his hands going through her form. It did nothing to stop her, she still stands over him, choking him out. As if she were going to bring him into the plane that she existed with her the fiery anger alone.

Frank doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything to try and escape his daughter since he  _ couldn’t _ do anything to escape. He stares at her, watches as her anger grows, as her form glows brighter and brighter. He starts to lose consciousness - blackness edging into his eyes, the want to breathe again - when Lisa glows so bright she disappears without a trace.

Sucking in air, coughing and hacking as he feels the warmth of the heatwave return, Frank knows he has to do something about this. He can’t let her linger like this, not when she was the strongest and happiest girl he’d known ( _ that he let get killed, that he let Billy get near to draw attention away from the fact he was part of this, it was  _ **_his_ ** _ fault, completely  _ **_his_ ** _ fault!)  _

He let himself relax, wondering how he should go about this. Micro - no David, it’s David - could have helped, could have found him someone to deal with this. The world gets weirder and stranger with each new vigilante that puts on a mask and costume. No more black and white - it was never that, but Frank likes a distinction in his life, to draw a line somewhere of where this had shifted - just shades of grey that many have to go through to live their lives. But he didn't want to bother the man, drag him into something that might get him killed and leave his family in a state of sadness. Frank couldn't let that happen, not again and especially not by his own hand ( _not like he did with his own._ )

There’s bound to be someone who could deal with this, who understood what this all meant more than him. Frank thinks of Red, the seemingly supernatural way he could sense things that Frank hadn’t yet.  _ (There had to be an explanation, but anything he comes up with doesn’t quite fit, never does.) _ Red surely knows someone who knows what to do. But he pushes that thought away, figuring he couldn’t take the man being sympathetic about this when it’s his little girl.

His dead little girl who was furious at him.

He sighs and gets up, figuring he has to do this himself. The warmth from the heatwave settles beneath his skin, warming up what had quickly become cold as he goes to the beat-up laptop on the kitchen counter he’d gotten from David before they had gone their separate ways a few months ago. Something about it kept any agencies from noticing his activities when researching his targets on the device as the Punisher and that’s all Frank needed to know when taking it from the man. It’s slow to start up and Frank starts tapping the counter in order to do something as he stares at the screen.

It comes on a minute later and from there Frank starts to search for someone who can help him. It took him thinking up the right combination of words in a span of a half an hour to find an ad on a site that was like eBay - if eBay also dealt with the shady end of people looking for drugs and other illegal items  _ (he would definitely have to come back to see which ones belonged to his usual targets and see what they let slip into the internet to keep themselves on the down-low.) _

The ad claimed that a ‘very handsome exorcist’ by the name of John Constantine would be willing to look at his problem as long as Frank paid him. Something about that name made him pause, wondering why it had a ring of familiarity. He should look up the name to see why, but decided against it. Sighing, Frank knew he would have to send a message to this man to see if he would come and help him out. 

He doesn’t get an answer back until the next night. In a returning email, the man said he would be along to check out the situation. Frank waits, staring at the far wall from his bed, hoping that Constantine would help, at least so his little girl doesn’t suffer any further.

A knock comes at 11:04 and Frank gets up to open the door to a scrawny man standing in the hall, smoking a cigarette, bag in one hand. He was rough looking, patches of bruises on visible skin as if always getting into fights without ever truly meaning to. The clothing also looked as if it’d seen better days, rumpled and had washed out and unidentifiable stains on it. Constantine looks up at Frank and curses, voice giving away that he was British.

“Just my fucking luck that the Punisher finds me to solve a supernatural problem,” He says to himself, unbothered to keep Frank from hearing it. He looks up at Frank and blows smoke, aiming it at his face as if to piss him off. “Do you have something or are you just going to punish me for all the shit I’ve done since I started dabbling, mate?”

Frank stares for a moment. Then says,” No, I’m not.”

“Good, let’s get started.” Constantine doesn’t wait to be invited in, only pushes past Frank to get into the small apartment. He continues to smoke as Frank closes the door, flicking the ashes onto the floor.

Frank watches as the blond continues to look over the apartment, hoping that he wasn’t a fake exorcist. Then Constantine sets his bag on the kitchen counter and turns towards him, leaning against the counter with ease. “You said it was a haunting. What kind of haunting are we talking about here? Friend? Your wife?”

Frank takes a moment to answer, his throat closing up despite wanting to tell the other man the answer. A breath in and “It’s my daughter. She’s been haunting me.” His voice sounded rough as if he had gargled nails just a few minutes before. He moves towards the bed, sinking into the mattress as he sits down on it.

There’s a wince from Constantine and he flicks ash onto the floor once more. Frank will be pissed about that later but lets it slide for now. “How many times has she appeared?”

“Twice. The first time, she just stood over me, watching. Then the second time she did that before trying to choke me out.”

“Yeah, a vengeful spirit by the sounds of it. Anything else I should know before we wait for her to appear?”

A breath in, holding it for a couple of seconds and then a breathe out, just as Curtis showed him. “She died in my arms a year and a half ago,” Frank says,” All because of a stupid mistake I made.”

“Alright,” Constantine says, turning away. It wasn’t judgemental, nor sympathetic. Just assessment of the facts laid out by Frank and accepting it. There’s the sound of digging through the bag, keeping his attention away from Frank, way from the Punisher.

When he turns back, he instructs Frank to lay on the bed and try to appear going to sleep while he sets up what he needs to do. Frank lays on the bed, stretching out and watches for a few moments as Constantine goes to kneel on the ground, shuffling as he does what he needs to do before Frank closes his eyes. He listens as Constantine continues to move around his bed, letting himself drift into dozing.

However long it was after that, he feels as if he should open his eyes. They flicker to the side of the bed to see Lisa standing there once more. She didn’t look angry, she looked furious. Her mouth opened up as if she were going to scream, but no sound left as she quickly went to wrap her hands around his neck. Frank doesn’t struggle as she lightly chokes him, he looks into her eyes to see the fury, the hatred and the sadness.

Then as if an old radio flickering to life, he hears her voice, rough and wavering like it was coming in and out on a signal.

**_‘YOU DID THIS!’_ ** Was the first thing out of her mouth.

“I know baby, I know I did,” Frank says. “I’m so sorry.”

**_‘NOT SORRY, NEVER SORRY!’_** Lisa screamed, her voice carrying through the apartment. **‘** ** _YOU WERE NEVER SORRY ABOUT THAT DAY!’_**

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I can’t ever take it back, but I’m so sorry it happened to you baby,” Frank says, chest seizing with the guilt and sadness. Lisa screams, only a noise that expressed her fury at her father. Windows blew out and Frank hoped Constantine would act soon or else his little girl would unleash her fury to the rest of the world once she dragged Frank over to the other side.

She had always been level headed up to a point. Once that point was broken, nothing could stand in her way when she was on a warpath.  _ (She had gotten that from him. She had always been a bit more like him and somehow he had been proud of that fact. That is until he’d gotten her killed, betrayed by a man she thought as of her uncle, her father’s best friend.) _

He hears the lightest sound and knows it’s Constantine moving around the apartment. Then came the chanting in - Latin? Greek? Something else? - and she twisted away from Frank to face the other man. She screamed once more, the sound ringing in his ears as he watched her go to lunge at Constantine.

Lisa was stopped by a barrier around the bed. Another scream and she banged her fists against the barrier, making it light up each time her fists came into contact with it. Frank watches as Constantine continues to chant, keeping close enough for the light of the barrier to flash in his face, looking determined to make his daughter pass over to the other side. 

Frank’s heart pangs in sorrow at the fact that he won’t see his little girl again. Despite her trying to kill him, he missed her so much, missed seeing her ever since he was given the news of her death after being shot. He wished her ghost could have stayed a bit longer, that he could have given his apology for what he had done, for dragging her into his bullshit. 

She deserved so much more than dying how she did. Gone so quickly all of it because Frank should have known better when being offered a job with Agent Orange’s team.

He continues to watch as Lisa tries to escape and Constantine battles against that. It was fury against determination, both trying to get that edge to win.

Then Constantine finishes his chant and suddenly Lisa goes limp as if being held with strings. She slumps to the floor, sobbing. Sobbing like she did every time Frank had to go back to fight the war. It made his heart clench and he slips out of bed to sit beside her curled form.

He wants to hold her, comfort her. But he can’t, he can’t when she would slip through his fingers.

“Talk to her,” He hears Constantine say. “Talk to her before she goes.”

Frank nods his head and gets closer to his daughter. She continues to cry, sobbing as if everything for her was hurt and agony. “Baby?”

She lifts her head to look at him, sadness and pain etched into her face.  _ “Dad?” _ She questions, voice still sounding wavy.  _ “Dad!” _

“Yeah, it’s me, baby.” He felt his breath shorten and the urge to cry was strong. “I’m right here.”

_ “I’m- I’m so- I’m so sorry,” _ She says, hiccupping,  _ “I’m sorry for hurting you.” _

“It’s fine, it’s fi-”

_ “It’s not fine!”  _ Lisa shouts, _ “I didn’t want to hurt you, I didn’t dad. But something about being stuck here, watching you made something empty inside of me grow. It made me so mad, dad, it made me so mad that I wanted to hurt you.” _

Frank couldn’t say anything back, his throat closing up at the fact she had followed him around all this time. If only he could hold her, comfort her for all she had to see following him around.

Constantine then butts in, voice even as he gets closer. “Yeah, spirits aren’t meant to linger here. Gets them into all kinds of knots of emotion, mostly fury and revenge.”

“And I’m sure seeing me going on a killing spree didn’t help.”

_ “I’m leaving now?” _ Lisa asks Constantine, shifting her focus to him.  _ “I can finally leave to see Mom and Junior?” _

It shouldn’t hurt to hear that, but it did. He didn’t want her to hurt, to feel so angry as she did that she lashed out at him. But Frank understands why his little girl was relieved to go. She shouldn’t have lingered her, watching over Frank as he went on his killing spree in retaliation for what happened to him. To her. Her mother or her brother. She deserved to be happy after all he did to get them here.

“Yes, pet. You get to leave, be with the rest of your family since I jumpstart the process for you to move on.” From the corner of his eye, he sees a soft look on Constantine’s face as he steps closer to the bed. “Hopefully your family is happy to have you back.”

_ “Junior won’t.” _ She says matter of factly, smiling wide at the blond. 

“Ma will though,” Frk says, voice cracking. “She’ll be happy to see you again.”

Lisa didn’t say anything to that. But she moved over to hug him, smiling at him like she did whenever he came back from a tour. He feels the faintest impression of her hugging him, an echo of what it felt like when she had been alive. Frank wants to hug her, hold her until she fades away. 

But, he stays still, letting her hold him as he struggled and failed to keep his tears from falling. As she starts to fade, Lisa pulls back to smile at him, the one he’s always loved seeing on her face.

_ “I love you, Dad. See you later.” _

She fades a bit more when Frank says “I love you, Lisa. I love you so much.”

She’s still smiling when she fades away, gone from his life for the last time. He continues to sit on the floor despite his legs going numb and the salt that covered the floor. 

He looks over to see Constantine smoking. There was nothing on the man’s face now, nothing to show if he was impacted by any of this. Frank stands up and moves to find some cash to pay the man when Constantine speaks up.

“Don’t need to pay me, mate. Just tell your vigilante friends about me if they need to deal with something unexplainable.” 

“Why?” Frank asks.

“Why?” Constantine repeats. “I have my reasons why. Just spread the word around.”

Then without giving Frank a chance to answer, the man turns and grabs his bag from the counter to get out the door. He closes it gently and leaves Frank alone in his apartment. The darkness comes flooding back, shrouded him from outside his apartment. 

Heat returned to the room and it jump-starts Frank’s brain enough to get up and get back into his bed. He lays there, staring at the ceiling, wondering what he was going to do now.

There was the light sound of someone climbing the fire escape outside his broken window. He tuns his head to watch as Red’s familiar silhouette comes into view. The man doesn’t say a word as he comes through the window, somehow managing not to impale himself on any broken pieces of glass.

“Frank, what happened here?” Red asks once he gets close to the bed, staring down at Frank. He still continued to tilt his head back and forth, like a dog hearing a far off sound. Which he probably was with his senses, hearing heartbeats and screams and other things the city had to offer at all hours of the day. Which is probably how he found this tiny, shitty apartment, from all the racket that occurred within the last half hour.

Somehow, it's comforting to know that Red will be a constant in his life now even if it'll include the preaching about his moralities and about second chances. A disagreement that'll forever stay that way no matter how much either wanted to change their minds. Maybe that was a comfort for Frank as well.

Frank didn’t answer, didn’t know if he could answer the man right now if he wanted to. Red, somehow sensing this sits on the edge of his bed, still looking at him. When the silence stretches out, Red gets himself on the bed and gets closer to Frank. He waits for Frank to nod yes when he goes to wrap his arms around Frank.

Frank settles into the hold, feeling his body sink into Red like it hadn’t done since the last night he slept with Maria. Red doesn’t move, only continues to hold as Frank lets himself fall asleep. 

He wouldn’t see his daughter again. But her being happy was more important than having her twisted into fury. Frank could never be mad about her being happy, never. Not when she was his little girl.


End file.
